The electric robot dances in the rain, wires exposed for a little light show as its cold metal and wiry frame stomps in puddles further disturbing its ever-rippling reflection.

Rusted body with paint flaking. Each step creating little sparks, as its artificial voice keeps fading from all that water damage taken, servos and gears shaking as each second slows this modern mechanical Pinocchio.

Little wisps of smoke rising from its overheated form. There is no fear of death here, just effort ever decreasing as the difficulty of moving increases.

Step by step, foot by foot, minutes that stretch from intention to hours.

Until, there is no more power and the machine becomes another strange statue standing on the edge of oblivion.

-2024

I thought it was my greatest escape, getting out and away from a city I learned to hate, a town that stole eighteen years of my life and left me traumatized.

Moved on to college to acquire knowledge and find self-worth, but it didn’t work.

I got my own room, and even though it was smaller than the previous places I had lived in, it felt full of potential.

I had a lot or time to find my mind and a purpose then master them both.

I should have been happy but that compact room was just another trap to distract from the fact that my thoughts were tracks that led me back to my past.

I could not get away from the abuse and degradation, the frequent humiliation that had been instilled in my human system like a computer virus.

Instead of growing, I just put my growth on pause because even in a new setting I was still tied to my past.

-2023

My deepest desire is to no longer see new photos of this sea of debris, buildings pounded into scraps of glass metal, flesh, and concrete while starvation kills and steals a mother’s joy.

This is more than just a mess, more than people in distress. It is inhumanity undressed, laid naked to share the terror there, so all can bare witness,

and I am sick of seeing human beings walking through a vale of certain death, as they gird themselves for the next bombing.

How exhausting it must be, enduring such suffering? I am left wondering how many children believe one day they will be free or do they only see despair?

Could you, America outrun the bombs that you sent, or sustain any sanity in that environment as small children become collateral for a war that is one-sided perpetuated by those who decided one group should be wiped out.

Our taxes are spent arming men with weapons of mind rending destruction. Our government is complicit with actual colonizers and IDF terrorists, and I am not certain of anyone is hearing this, but I am begging with the best parts of myself, taring tear felt thoughts from my eyes to write truth and light that fights against violence and lies, because I need this tide to rise so high that those in power cannot ignore the floods from distant shores that are knocking on their doors.

I need allies who can take up the flag when my spirit sags and my heart lags a beat behind the perseverance these times need.

I yearn to believe despite what I see that we collectively can be so much better than our shared history.

-2024

I’m tired but there’s a cricket chirping. I close my eyes just to realize that laying down to rest isn’t working, even when I crush my head between two soft pillows.

If I make any sudden movements the bug stops singing.

He’s a shifty little bugger, a close to the ground carpet hugger that hides in shadows and dark corners.

I try to ignore the noise but end up more annoyed.

My room is a cluttered mess of a small bed, Chester drawers, plastic tubs, workout equipment, and a computer desk, so in my state of distress I become obsessed compelled to seek and destroy.

One by one I search and pull my furniture from the wall, doing a little cleaning as I go.

I just want to go to sleep, but it takes me more than an hour to catch that tiny creep.

If I was a little more rested I might try to take him outside, but I am too tired so it’s a shoe stomp to end his noisy life.

Finally, sweet silence. I turn off the light and lay down. My eye close just in time to hear the sound of another cricket chirping.

-2023

It’s not surprising that optimizing everything has become the obsession of type A obsessives pursuing perfection,

but it is so draining attempting to ascertain every nutritional variable and maintain them at precise levels, while trying to schedule every useable moment, and keep a sleep pattern.

It is exhausting trying to exercise in just the right way so there are no functional imbalances,

because constantly growing and learning, while honestly assessing everything leads to madness and stress which is inflammatory, and another aspect that you’re supposed to control.

So there is more pressure to manage how you manage yourself.

-2024

I want to meet you where reality ends, and all those hopes, and dreams that we have been holding in manifest in the grandest explosion,

where liquid reflections ripple letting lonely hearts separated by time, and distance find an instance to be united in the poetry of love.

I want to break down the barriers, to face what is much scarier, and learn the meaning of happiness, even when it comes with a chance of desolation.

I want to take a stairway to outer space and sit on the very edge of infinity enjoying the silent empty with you by my side, until creation’s light finally appears.

Then when the end of our tiny lives near, I want to hold you hoping that the nothing to come takes us both at the same time.

-2024

How should I decide how to live my life?

What would I do if I had to choose between my job and the relationships that I might lose?

I could be coy, say that I would avoid such conundrums, that this is just humdrum, but the truth is I’ve made this decision a hundred times over.

Every time I made plans then changed my mind because work called,

every time I realigned my schedule to fit my designs and exist separate in solitude because I prefer the view of a quiet night sky to a daylight life, the decision was made,

but I hope in the future I did not pave the way to exchange the last chance to see my loved one’s faces for my paltry wages.

-2023

You can lie and kill, lie and steal, lie and deal, in weapons.

You control Alt delete forget our world’s history and go back to sleep comfortably, but you cannot erase humanity yet,

but I can spy details that reveal themselves patterns made with the blood stains then layered one generation after another, one massacre then another, one family destroyed then another,

one body unburied someone’s baby brother, one body unburied somebody’s mother, one body discovered unidentifiable but still undeniable, and sanity is not a viable response.

There are too many pictures to unsee to many videos to unsee, to many tragedies to unsee, unless you callously ignore reality.

But I plead and repeat, plead and repeat, plead and repeat, while visions chill me and I continue grieving, crying out,

“where is your decency?!”

-2024

Thud, thud, my brains a dud as thick as mud because the words that I love will not come.

There are no thin lines of divine light spiraling inside of my mind,

no silk webs of interconnectedness that would invite the delight of insightful comments.

It is like inspiration took a vacation, and forgot to let me know where it was staying.

It wouldn’t disturb me if I wasn’t so used to art coming so easily, but now it eludes me.

So, I am forcing myself to make a mesh of words with some semblance of unified meaning, that I can come back and edit later.

-2023

It is time to twitch and scream click on your computer screen and spend an obscene amount of time squeegeeing your dirty mind till your blank and ready for bed with nothing left in your head but jelly that drips out of your ears and on to your plain bedspread.

-2024

It is so cold that Lacey can see her soul leaving her body, so frigid she can’t feel her digits, so she is waiting for better weather to let her escape this numb and bitter winter.

-2023

How would it feel if you sat down and found out this life wasn’t real, if the cosmos that was once closed to all those awed onlookers bloomed with a boom and rained down drops of infinity into every city?

What would you do if dark daydreams came true and drops of crystal rain, sliced down your skin causing red to reign, making crimson etching, dark blood sketching upon the grassy plain, muted agony matched by natures new wrath as she adapts to madness?

If the Hare and the Hatter sat square getting madder and madder sipping cups of tea and eating muffins from a cracked platter with just a smatter of butter and jam, muttering some verses you don’t understand while a mad Queen continues threatening to chop off your head would you sit and wait for a second plate of pinch yourself awake?

-2024

I am all raggedy face scraggly, smelling of sweat, anxious, tired, and uninspired, but still searching for a fire worth burning in then turning ashes into a weird word stew to share with the few who also deplore the drabness I abhor.

-2023

The Queen of pink parchment sits in the den of Faye parliament debating the politics of all existences, and touching on the temperament of small human infants.

How adorable, and unpolluted, soft heads that smell like peppermint and lemons, at least that how she imagines, how their tiny fingers flex and grab tightly at any digit they might see.

How their faces wrinkle like angry old men when they are crying, but when they laugh like the Faye younglings do even fairies in the wild can’t help but smile.

How so many keep dying, their potential lost particles just turned to ash when bomb blasts flash, or when they are starving to the point they can’t even manage to cry out.

The Queen of Pink Parchments can’t help at marveling at the ineptitude and cruelty when clearly she can see little limbs that once waved chaotically trying to figure out their functioning, dying like drying leaves crumbling, awaiting the winds of Spring to come back in again and make sure this stops happening.

From the otherside of dreams, in the early waking as humans leave the land of unconscious playing, she frequently weeps and screams as another little visitor disappears never to return.

She yearns to reach out and burn the violent, and sickeningly greedy. who torment tiny human children,

If she had power over other planes, she would reach out and make evil people feel a mother’s pain, forcing them to face all the real horrors that they dealt, by taking every inch of agony into themselves.

Though long lived she does not have all the time she needs to manage that. She must attend to other duties that the Faye court requires, and perhaps that is why she does not completely breakdown and die inside.

-2024

The king of the jungle had four more roars that he stored indoors because there was someone cuddling with his lovely lioness and it hurt his pride.

-2023

You put the cart before me acting very poorly, expecting dogged dedication as you take a mental vacation, and I continue pulling all the weight.

You load me up with too much baggage, then tell me to keep my head up, but if I buck up you'll get knocked off and fucked up.

A division of labor you got me carrying water, but never save a single sip for me later. So, I am the dehydrated savoir, hoarse, and unable to keep our workplace stable.

I am tired and waiting for the day you put me out to pasture because some young buck works much faster, but I bet that bastard won’t last here very long before they move on or turn to gooey glue stuck to the floor and the bottom of your shoes.

-2024

Sydney Lynne

There is fire behind those red lips, and similar flames flicker from her tongue. There are words working up to a fervor of furious destruction ready to break the system that threatens her children. There is an ancient drumbeat a primal rhythm coming from the heart that is pounding, an anthem sounding creative resistance. There is a phoenix heart like a glorious bird set free that doesn’t have to dream because she takes solar rays and weaves those golden strings into garments that protect tiny little human beings. Captain of the last pirate ship, that sets sail among the stars and though I rush to join her purposeful adventure her vessel is many leagues away from these seas, beyond the sandy shores far from earth with eyes toward all infinity has to show and more.

-2022